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Thursday 4 December 2008

Diary

Clemency Burton-Hill's diary

One of the great adventures of being an actor is filming abroad, when suddenly you have the opportunity not only to visit, but actually to work somewhere else; to feel temporarily part of another city’s fabric rather than floating along its surface. This, then, comes to you from glorious, sweltering Rome, or more precisely from the Cavalieri Hilton, whose view over this ancient, unreal city, is quite breathtaking.

I’m here doing costume fittings for The Red Priest, a movie shooting later this summer. Luca, my tailor at Farani, the historical costumiers, is clearly a genius but has perhaps something of the demonic about him. As he laces my 18th-century corset, my waist seems miraculously to have shrunk to the size of Keira Knightley’s, but at some point my eyeballs must be popping out of my skull and my face turning purple because the director Liana shrieks, ‘Luca! Loosen it!’ Luca looks dismayed. ‘But it’ll ruin my shape!’ he wails. ‘She can’t breathe!’ Liana helpfully points out. Luca grudgingly lets some air in, and wow, I can respire again. That evening, Liana, who refreshingly appears to have scant regard for the concept of size zero actresses, takes everyone to dinner in Trastevere. We eat like kings (it’s a few weeks until the dreaded corset has to go back on) and talk into the night about film, life and, naturally, Italian politics. Is this work? It doesn’t feel like it.

Still, I sleep like a baby in my palatial hotel suite. It was a manic last week in London, much of it spent hopping between broadcasting studios. To Sky News first, where I had the honour of discussing the papers on Adam Boulton’s show with Tony Benn. No sooner had the octogenarian legend, as sprightly as ever, pointed out that Labour, unlike the Conservatives, were not in the habit of stabbing their leaders in the back, than David Miliband launched his artfully transparent clarion call to wavering voters in the Guardian. At LBC Radio a few days later, the talk was all ‘will-he-won’t-he’; a question that was still rumbling on when I arrived at the BBC, where I’m a regular studio guest on Radio 5 Live’s Sunday morning show. (Presenter Gabby Logan was in Beijing, but replaced by the lovely Gethin Jones.) Political blogger Iain Dale and I had a debate about what Mili-Vanilli’s intentions might really be, and were later joined by the Chinese ambassador, Fu Ying. Humble and articulate, she conceded that China still had a long way to go when it came to liberalisation, but insisted that politicising the Games was not the way to accelerate progress.

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